Salford Council tries to keep it clean on MediaCity

£2m grant to ensure Ship Canal wildlife won't suffer at Salford Quays

Salford City Council will oversee a £2m plan to ensure the quality of water in the Manchester Ship Canal around Salford Quays.

The scheme is designed to encourage wildlife to thrive in the canal and avoid a 'mass fish kill' in the water.

The council has lined up a grant of £1.2m from United Utilities and another £900,000 from the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) and will act as the project managing body on a new aeration programme.

The scheme is designed to encourage wildlife to thrive in the canal and avoid a 'mass fish kill' in the water.

The new arrangement is a partnership between the council, Trafford MBC, the Environment Agency, United Utilities, Peel Holdings and APEM, a private company that has been advising on water quality issues at Salford Quays from the beginning of development in the mid 1980s.

The new programme is scheduled to run from the summer of 2010 through until April 2013.

'Considering the strategic importance of such sites as MediaCityUK, the Lowry and Imperial War Museum North in the Salford Quays turning basin (and the amount of public/private investment therein) the waterfront forms a visible and integral part of the public realm,' the council said in a report to its planning committee. 'As such it is important to the range of stakeholders that we seek such a solution.'

A previous funding arrangement to carry out aeration that started in 2000 came to an end earlier this year.

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